Wednesday, January 9, 2013
A Firefighter's Silent Killer: Suicide
12/01/2012
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BY PAUL J. ANTONELLIS
JR. and DENISE
THOMPSON
Silence often hides
the very issue one must confront. Suicide often occurs because of the silence
of society and the silence a person perceives is necessary when contemplating
suicide caused by the absence of open and honest communication regarding the reality
of suicidal thoughts in response to pain, stress, trauma, and even depression
or other mental illnesses. Many people do not like to talk about suicide
because of cultural, moral, social, ethical, or religious beliefs. For some,
there may be a strong emotional tie to a friend or a family member who has
committed suicide. For others, it is a misperception that no one
"talks" about suicide. It is this very silence that prevents
reduction of suicide among firefighters. If we are serious about decreasing the
number of firefighter suicides in this country, we must change that the fire
service does not talk about suicide and that it has not embraced any formal
suicide training/education awareness/prevention programs. Only in the past year
or so have a number of fire service agencies/departments taken a more
aggressive approach to educating firefighters on suicide. These agencies serve
as a benchmark for others. In this article, we explore the issue of silence
surrounding the topic of suicide, risk factors for suicide, the need for
additional scientific research on suicides in the fire service, and the
development of a national suicide prevention and education program aimed at the
fire service (career, call, and volunteer).
THE SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM
Regardless of which
problem-solving process you use, generally the steps are identifying the
problem, followed by analyzing the problem, and then deciding on the most
effective solution. Here is the first challenge: The fire service collectively
has not admitted suicide is a problem. Until the fire service identifies
suicide as a problem for fire personnel, little time and fiscal resources will
be devoted to suicide prevention. Nationally, the fire service does not have a
formal tracking mechanism of firefighter suicides, which makes it difficult to
analyze how significantly the fire service is impacted by suicides. Overall,
the fire service lacks scientific research identifying suicide as a significant
cause of death for firefighters. One study that examined North Carolina
firefighters found the following: "Compared with professional firefighter
line-of-duty deaths (LODDs), suicides occurred more than three times as
often."1 This statistic, along with anecdotal evidence,
suggests the fire service indeed has a silent killer
For more information go to: http://www.fireengineering.com/articles/print/volume-165/issue-12/features/firefighters-silent-killer-suicide.html
